CCGrid 2008 is the eigth in a series of successful international symposia and for the first time will take place in Lyon in in France. Within this conference, there's a call for tutorials section in which Bora and I will be presenting a tutorial "Trusted virtualization and trusted security" which will cover and demonstrate 1) Introduction to trusted computing, 2) Trusted virtualization and 3) Relation with existing grid security approaches. We'll be presenting a 3-hour tutorial on 19th of May, 2008 between 08:00 - 11:00 (!). See you there, in case you are interested.

90'ların hemen başlarında, ODTÜ 1. yurt laboratuvarındaki MS-DOS makinelerin VT100 terminallerinden Gopher ortamlarına doğru "tıklarken" web teknolojisi emekleme aşamasında, ancak ileride ciddi bir alternatif olacağına kesin gözüyle bakılan bir teknoloji durumundaydı. Gopher.cc.metu.edu.tr'a her bağlantımızda ayrı bir bilgi yumağı (karmaşası?) ile karşılaşır, henüz yeni tanıştığımız LAN, Sunsite, Mosaic gibi kavramların ne anlama geldiğini anlamaya çalışırdık.

Grafiksel internet ilk defa UNIX'ler, sonra da Linux ve Windows sistemlere aktarılırken, masasında SGI Irix olanlara gıpta ile bakılırdı. Bir işistasyonu (workstation) olmayanlar ya VMS, ya da VM terminale bağlanıp lynx ile internete girmek durumundaydı. Kimi zaman seri bir port üzerinden bağlantı kurulur, daha şanslı olanlar kendi bilgisayarlarından erişim sağlar, ama disk kısıtı olduğu için 4 Mb kota ile e-posta alışverişi yapmaya çalışırdı. Çoğu sistem yöneticisi ile kullanıcıların, hatta zamanında benim de kavga etmeme neden olan bu kısıt, daha sonra 4 Mb'ın 8, 16, 50, 100 Mb olmasıyla nispeten aşıldı. Şimdi evimize 1 TB'lık disklerin gelmesiyle o zamanlarda "kapanın elinde kalan" 4 Mb kotanın tam 250.000 katının keyfini sürmeye hazırlanıyoruz.

İlk HTML deneyimim de 1993'ün başında oldu. O heyecanla gidip "HTML sayfası nasıl hazırlanır?" anafikirli bir kılavuz yazmışım. Sağolsun Murathan Bostancı bunu Ankara Üniversitesi sunucularına koydu, nasıl olduysa hala kaybolmadı, sunucu donanımı defalarca güncellenmesine rağmen yerini korudu. Öte yandan bu kılavuzu yazmamın üzerinden tam 15 yıl geçti, ama standardın temelleri hiç değişmedi. Sırasıyla tabloların, resim haritalarının (image map), çerçevelerin (frame) standarda eklenmesini gördük, her seferinde daha zengin, kimi zaman da o zengin duruşuna rağmen çok kısır içeriğe sahip web sayfalarının hazırlanmasına tanıklık ettik.

Asıl konumuza geri dönersek; Gopher da, Archie de artık çoktan ölmüş, üzerine ölü toprağı serptiğimiz teknolojilerden. Google bile öneri verirken gopher sports, gopher wood diyor, gopher server demiyor. Halbuki bir zamanlar pek çok üniversitede bulunan sunucular sayısız araştırmacıya kütüphane erişimi sağlıyor, internetten faydalanmanın en has unsurunu oluşturuyordu. Artık dünyada sayısı 100'ü bile bulmayan Gopher sunucuları, sadece akademik amaçlarla tutuluyor. Bir zamanlar oldukça yüklü ücretle satılan bu Gopher sunuculara dönüp bakan kalmadı. Gopher, Archie, WAIS, Veronica.. Hepsi bit pazarının gözden düşenleri oldu.

Hala merak edeniniz varsa, Mustafa Akgül'ün yine 1993 yılında yazılmış güzel bir internet kılavuzu belgesi işinize yarayacaktır.

Ne diyelim, web çıktı, mertlik bozuldu.

From the announcement on Pardus announce list:

We are proud to present you the final Pardus release of this year, namely Pardus 2007.3 Lynx lynx. This version features one of the most well known, however nearly extinct animals of Anatolia because of unconscious hunting. Unfortunately, Lynx lynx was only seen once lately, and we are dedicated to make this beatiful animal live on our desktops.

Pardus 2007.3 Lynx lynx comes with a better network management utility, improved YALI installer, updated PISI package manager and hundreds of bug fixes throughout the operating system. There are also many updates to packages, including but not limited to KDE 3.5.8, OpenOffice.org 2.3 and K3b 1.0.4

For more information, release notes and download instructions, please go to http://www.pardus.org.tr/eng

In order to experience a seamless CD writing, we encourage you to use DAO (disk at one) mode with 16x speed.

I'll be giving a seminar in Brussels on December 1st, about F/OSS usability. Main topics of talk will be on:

• Definition of usability
• Making a software usable: developer’s point of view
• Issues of working with developers
• Collaborative media servers helping usability awarenes
• Main points of online project management
• Interaction patterns between human-computer interaction experts and developers
• How does open source usability differ from institutionalized usability?·
• Analysis of a recent survey of OSS usability people

Date: December 1, 2007

Time: 12:00-13:00

Place: La Bellone, Rue de Flandre, 46 1000 Bruxelles

For the organization web page, click here .

3 years ago, when men were men, I was interested in being a producer - yes, a TV producer whose aim is to make a series of TV shows featuring open source software and Linux. With Dinçer Karaca, we have organized world's 1st Linux TV show with 13 episodes, each of them shown weekly on Technology Channel. It was a great success at that time because the programme included many surprises - once a penguin rushed into the stage and in another recording we rolled on the floor laughing, don't remember why now. We have given many nice gifts to our audience who were able to answer a basic question and what's more, each week we had a distinct guest. Dinçer and I hosted experienced people from Oracle, IBM, Linux Users Association, BEA, HP, you name it. Very fun days indeed... Here's a link showing an interview with Sinan Gürkan of AmigaOS. Unfortunately all the past recordings were harmed because of an accident (I was told so from the vp). 

One more link featuring another interview in SkyTurk.

OpenOffice.org community holds and event each year in one of the cities, this year in Barcelona between 19-21 September. As marketing lead and l10n team lead of Turkey, I was able to make the one in Koper, Slovenia, however Barcelona event unfortunately coincided with another event. This meant losing the opportunity to see the live presentations - but wait, the video recordings of the conference is already on the web page (see Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Among the presentations, I find the following nice to hear, and highly recommend to anyone else who are willing to know more about OpenOffice.org project:

1. Keynote: OpenOffice.org 3.0 and beyond by Louis Suarez Potts, community manager of OpenOffice.org

2. Who's using OpenOffice.org , by Erwin Tenhumberg from Sun Microsystems. 

3. How to fix an issue in OpenOffice.org - a bit more technical, but worth reading 

Unfortunately Barbara Held's presentation is one of the most interesting ones out there, but lacking a link to the document. She's talked about the ongoing activities and projects at European level and explains the policy background. If you happen to see the doc on the street, please tell it to come to me. 

Other interesting presentations include:

1. ODF in mobile devices

2. The missing piece in OpenOffice.org: Thunderbird/Lightning

PS: Some of the presentations - luckily those who are really worth having a look - is missing from the web page and I've been informed they'll be located appropriately.

Dear usability expert & F/OSS developer,

We are inviting you to participate in a doctorate study that investigates how developers and HCI experts work in a collaborative project. You will be asked to answer a set of questions regarding F/OSS projects you take part in. Your participation in this survey will provide information that could be used to improve how HCI experts and developers interact in a F/OSS project.

Online survey takes only 15 minutes to complete and will allow us to have an understanding of interaction patterns among project participants.

If you are a F/OSS developer, click here

If you are usability expert, click here .

in order to complete this short survey. Please circulate this email to your friends and contacts so that we can have the widest possible feedback.

Note: demographic inputs of this study will be kept strictly confidential, i.e your name and any other private data will not appear anywhere publicly.

Many thanks for your participation and help!

Those who has a TV at home, probably deploys a set top box of some kind, again probably having a satellite dish, DVB-T tuner or such. It even starts to become messy as you buy one of those D-Smart, Digiturk, DivX player all at one place, scattered around your (already messy) living room.

Now VESTEL is introducing another concept - all-in-one TV which includes a Linux base set top box device. It can connect to internet, letting you read e-mails, watch YouTube videos, login to Flickr, read your e-mails, read USB disks/flash disks and even login to UPNP devices online via wired/wireless network. This is a new, innovative concept when it comes to merging TV and STB, without the hassle to connect yet another device to your TV. 

What is more, all these things run on Linux, and everything you see on the screen from ground up is coded with a bunch of talented coders in Istanbul. The project is becoming a lot entertaining since it introduces new and very challenging issues which need to be solved. 

Those who wish to have a try a demo, just wave to VESTEL booth during Cebit 2007 between 2-7 October, 2007.

Actions for the last two weeks:

• Read: some articles from Open Source Enterprise Magazine and Intel OSS page
• Got happy with wow factor: French education ministry completes migration to Red Hat
  
• Read: "Improbable" by Adam Fawer and "Brain games: Conspiracy theories" by Erol Mütercimler
  
• Seen: Graz, Austria. Subaction: Taken photo, seen the monuments, wandered around and shopped
• Worked on: An embedded Linux project and trusted computing
• Studied: Trusted platform module internals
• Visited: Relatives in Izmir, friends in Eregli (Zonguldak)
• Listened to: Eighties songs from Youtube
• Saddened by: Closing of IT Business Weekly magazin
• Deleted: Too much spam
• Eaten: (Censored)